Royal Appliance Manufacturing Co

Advertiser: Royal Appliance Manufacturing Co. Agencies: Wolf Group, Cleveland, and Bennett Kuhn Varner, Atlanta Challenge: Demonstrate the value of Dirt Devil's newest vacuum, the bagless Swivel Glide Vision. The Ad: A television commercial shows an animated Lego-type character playfully keeping one step ahead of the vacuum as someone vacuums the rug in a family room. Then, oops, the toy gets sucked up into the vacuum.

Advertiser: Royal Appliance Manufacturing Co. Agencies: Wolf Group, Cleveland, and Bennett Kuhn Varner, Atlanta Challenge: Demonstrate the value of Dirt Devil's newest vacuum, the bagless Swivel Glide Vision. The Ad: A television commercial shows an animated Lego-type character playfully keeping one step ahead of the vacuum as someone vacuums the rug in a family room. Then, oops, the toy gets sucked up into the vacuum.

Marketers, eager to latch onto a fresh approach that has proven it can work, have appropriated the dead as pitchmen. But their use of dead men walking -- and interacting with current events -- has made the technique look tired. "This is hot now, but I believe the dead should stay dead," said Bob Kuperman, chief executive of Omnicom Group's TBWA/Chiat Day North America. "It's borrowed interest and a short-lived phase."

In the living room of a fashionable hillside home, Ken Kerry presses a few timid consumers to share their true feelings about a vacuum cleaner. Sitting barefoot on the shag carpeting while television cameras are trained on the five average folks arrayed before him, Kerry asks questions like: "What does the name Dirt Devil mean to you?" The inquiry draws a momentary hush.

A cultural icon's place in the public's heart is much like a politician's: He belongs to everyone and everyone acts as though they've elected him to Olympus. That's true for no one more than Fred Astaire, the American god of an American art form, the smooth soft shoe. Long after the curtain fell on his career, his audience remains as devoted as any fervent constituents. And when people think you're messing with their legends, watch out.